Can Glasgow steal Edinburgh's film festival crown?

SEVEN years ago when the Glasgow Film Festival unveiled its first programme, then director Nick Varley dismissed the idea of a challenge to Edinburgh. "Scotland and the UK as a whole has a major film festival in Edinburgh's," he said, adding: "We didn't want to be seen to set up something that was rivalling Edinburgh or in competition to it."

• Clint Eastwood, just one of the great and good to have graced Edinburgh's film festival

Rising in the West: (from left) Gillian Berrie, producer of Sigma Films; Gregory's Girl stars Clare Grogan and Gordon John Sinclair at last year's festival; You Instead, the Glasgow festival's closing night gala offering this year

Comparisons seemed absurd. The Glasgow World Film Festival, as it was called in 2004, had only about 6,000 tickets on sale. The Edinburgh International Film Festival had nearly ten times that figure, and a budget around the 1 million mark.

Glasgow is the hub of Scotland's screen trade, and the upstart festival was backed by independent directors such as Ken Loach and Peter Mullan. Opening attractions ran from a Woody Allen premiere to screenings of Glasgow's all-time favourites. But Edinburgh had 60 years of history on its side, and carried the city's vaunted festival brand, with a track record of premieres from ET to the Blair Witch Project. The capital's reaction was sniffy; film titles for Glasgow, suggested by Radio Forth listeners a couple of years later, included Buckfast at Tiffany's.

The comparisons with Edinburgh are not so foolish now. Glasgow's ten-day programme next month, unveiled this week, is its biggest yet. It includes 250 films and events in 15 venues, ranging from scoops on new releases, to quirky events, such as underwater projects with live music at a local swimming pool. Glasgow's sales rose to 30,000 tickets last year, while Edinburgh's fell 10 per cent, to about 44,000.

Reading the line-up in the context of parochial rivalries between East and West, it's tempting to say Glasgow has fired a large shot across Edinburgh's bow. The kinder conclusion is that Scotland increasingly has two major film festivals, rather than one. The concern for Edinburgh is whether its festival is losing ground. Its new bosses have embraced a radical departure this winter, embracing innovation and ditching what they say is a tired past of red carpets, awards, and VIP screenings. It's the destination that's anyone's guess.

Glasgow's closing night gala film this year is You Instead, by David Mackenzie. It's billed as a headline-friendly, rock'n'roll rom-com, filmed in guerrilla style over five days at T in the Park. It sold out the day after Thursday's programme launch.

Was Mackenzie defecting? A couple of years ago, his Hallam Foe was the opening gala at Edinburgh, where many scenes were filmed. Gillian Berrie, his producing partner at Sigma Films, said: "It's an extremely positive thing for a country the size of Scotland to have two respected film festivals - there's room for both." Mackenzie would definitely hope to return to Edinburgh. "But given that Sigma is a Glasgow-based company, it is a proud moment to have the world premiere of You Instead in our home city," she said."

Mackenzie was on his way to the Sundance Film Festival, for the premiere of another new film, Perfect Sense, a more conventional outing starring Bond girl Eva Green and Ewan McGregor. The film, an "apocalyptic romance" about two people who fall in love amidst a global pandemic, casts Green as an epidemiologist, and McGregor as a Glasgow truck driver. It was shot in locations round Glasgow.

Glasgow's other major Scottish coup is the UK premiere of The Eagle. The screening comes just a month before the film's UK release, directed by Kevin MacDonald, the Oscar-winning director of films such as The Last King of Scotland. Set in Roman Britain, based on Rosemary Sutcliffe's novel Eagle of the Ninth, on the famous lost legion, it was partly shot in Scotland. There will be huge interest in its opening here.

"It's a big coup, and we are super-excited," said Glasgow's co-director, Allison Gardner. "The Eagle was on our radar for a while and I said to Universal please, please may I have The Eagle."

Gardner says she would be "genuinely flattered" by any comparisons to Edinburgh, where she once worked as a festival front-of-house manager, and cut her teeth as a programmer. Glasgow cultivates an unpretentious style, where "the audience is king, they are the people that make the buzz".

The festival doesn't count premieres, or cater to the film trade, or focus on guests or VIPs. Edinburgh does, she observes, and "it's a tricky job. They have different expectations. They are showcasing brand-new films that nobody knows about. I hope distributors come to Glasgow and see films and buy them but that's not what I'm thinking about when I programme the festival."

Gardner and her co-director Allan Hunter have cultivated a relaxed, populist, wide-ranging programming style. They take films that have shown in other festivals in the past year, often from Toronto but sometimes Cannes, they will screen some that are available on DVD. This year's line up includes retrospectives of Meryl Streep, and Ginger Rogers, along with a new 3D Werner Herzog documentary.

"We sell tickets to the punters, all our shows are public, anybody can buy whatever," said Gardner. "The guests are always the last consideration in my mind in the sense that it's very hard to pin them down."

Glasgow's festival is basking in its rude health. It earned EventScotland backing for the first time this year, with total public funding of about 150,000. Scott Taylor, chief executive of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, could boast this year that "it continues to reinforce its reputation as the fastest growing film event in the UK", highlighting "Glasgow's style credentials as well as its cutting-edge arts and culture scene."

Edinburgh, by contrast, surely looks rocky. Three years ago, with a hefty UK Film Council grant, it was recast as Britain's film festival of "discovery", the UK equivalent of the Sundance Film Festival. The money helped fund a shift to June, intended to give the festival space away from the giants of August.

The cash has now run out. In the last year the festival has lost its general manager, chairman, veteran board members, and artistic director Hannah McGill. In the last month, its contract with its heavyweight Hollywood PR agency, has ended. So has its sponsorship deal with Standard Life, which paid for the festival's audience award, worth nearly 70,000, its biggest corporate sponsorship.

McGill has not been replaced. The festival now has a producer, and a promise of radical change lead by two former directors, the writer and film-maker Mark Cousins and producer Lynda Myles, and the actress Tilda Swinton, acting as creative advisers. The new vision rejects red carpets and awards, in favour of innovation. "The difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh is that Edinburgh has to compete for attention on a world stage, by being innovative," said Cousins. "Glasgow is a brilliant national festival for Scotland."

In the last several years, Edinburgh has often seemed caught between two stools, and struggling to live up to its laurels. It bills itself as a film industry event, traditionally listing scores of world and UK premieres. But the "red carpet" premieres, and cast press conferences, have certainly come off as second-rate, imported, slightly surreal events.

Cousins is busily jettisoning the more glamorous trimmings in favour of his radical change. The Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film has been ditched, along with the audience award. If household names come, it will be as "guest directors", to curate their own strands of the event. Cousins and his collaborators are promising announcements later this month.

The landscape of film festivals has utterly changed since Edinburgh launched in 1947, he argues. There are now about 2,000 film festivals in the world, he notes, a five-fold increase since the 1980s. While about 4,000 films are made each year, the festivals are chasing perhaps 400 of those which could be called great, or exciting. "The folly is chasing world premieres and if you are not Cannes, or Berlin, or Venice, can you get really great films?" Edinburgh last year listed 22 world premieres, and 62 UK premieres, in its line-up; but Cannes, Cousins notes, shows only about 20 films in its main competition; they're just so good, they are seen again and again.

"I'm simply suggesting bold ideas," he said. "Ideas create buzz. They create audience. There is an ongoing revolution in the film festival world and Edinburgh has to get right ahead of it. That world has got too stuck on money, champagne and limousines and posh frocks. What we have to do is exciting."

But has Glasgow already staked out some of that Fringey feel? The film writer Richard Mowe, who also works as a director of small film festivals, observed: "Glasgow in a very short time has really established a reputation for itself as a festival with an international net. It's a pick and mix festival, it's not aiming to be exclusive or anything like that. Edinburgh has thrown out its old identities," he said, "with uncertainty over where it's going. Edinburgh was rather dismissive about Glasgow in its early days, and lo and behold Glasgow has proved really that the audience is there for the audience they do."

Glasgow's co-director Gardner is a supporter of Edinburgh, but "like everyone else", she said, she is waiting to see where it goes. "I don't know what the path is. They need time to formulate their ideas."